Media Circus: Will They Or Won’t They? Edition

For the last couple of days I’ve been laid low by an achy blearghy lurgy and slept most of the time when I wasn’t puking, but now I emerge from the haze and it seems that no matter how often Mr Rabbit tells us all to stop talking about who might move for a spill and that we should talk about his wonderful magic policies instead, still everybody insists on speculating about how much longer he will last as PM.

Clarke and Dawe have been having great fun for their first two weeks of 2015.

As usual for media circus threads, please share your bouquets and brickbats for particular items in the mass media, or highlight cogent analysis or pointed twitterstorms etc in new media. Discuss any current sociopolitical issue (the theme of each edition is merely for discussion-starter purposes – all current news items are on topic!).

Yup. I’m almost tempted to check the TAB – I want to know what the odds are that Tony Abbott will go to the GG and ask him to call a double dissolution on Monday night…
(I’m still not certain which would be the more … appropriate response – if the GG lets TA call an election, we all get a chance to vent our spleens in ballot fashion, but the man himself is likely to be re-elected by the people of Warringah. If the GG says “no, take your medicine like the grown-up you proclaimed yourself to be” we could [at worst] find ourselves stuck with tone-deaf Tony as PM for the rest of this parliamentary term).

I would think the chances of a DD are pretty low. Unless he’s completely lost all sense and reason (and I will allow that certain recent decisions might suggest that he has) the PM has to realise that going to an election right now would have Queensland like results, and then the libs would have no qualms at all about dumping him as leader, because it’s practically de rigueur to boot the person who lost you an election.

Right now, I can’t decide whether I’d prefer Tony gets rolled or stays. Don’t get me wrong, he’s the worst Prime Minister Australia’s had in my lifetime (I’m 36), but the overwhelming problem is the policies, as awful as Tony is in his own right. If he stays, he has 18 more months to dig a deeper hole that might take the liberals 12 years to climb out of.
In any case, at the moment, my bet is that it’s a fizzer. Most of the discussion seems to be about how they don’t want to repeat Labor’s mistake of changing leader, not about Tony’s absurd decisions or unpopularity, and almost nothing at all about their policies.

They are sort of in a damned if they do damned if they don’t situation. If they don’t spill and the PM continues as he has been then the issues that led to this won’t go away and the next gaffe will bring it on again. If they do they look like Labor unless Abbott resigns from Parliament to clear the air and I can’t see that happening. So then leadershit speculation will continue regardless.

Still so early in the morning and so many soundbite spill-tropes in the news coverage!
Loyalty. Disloyalty. Team. Great Achievements Needing To Be Continued. End This Circus For The Sake Of The Nation. The Electorate Wants A United Cabinet. We Can’t Go Back To The Chaos Under Labor. BudgetCrisisBudgetCrisisPleaseRememberThere’sABudgetCrisis. We Are Not The Labor Party.
I feel like a I need a row of shot glasses and some partners for a drinking game, except way too early in the day (and liver cowering at the thought).

Well done, Liberal Party, the best possible result for Labor. You wound your leader but you don’t remove him. Now he will go on publicly bleeding until you have to do this all over again later in the year.

Well the White Ribbon people have some ‘splainin to do with another of their ambassadors claiming that women are more likely to commit domestic violence against their partners and that men are being forgotten. FFS. I am not linking to their rubbish, it is in the Oztrayan if anyone wants to read it.

Megpie, what is happening in 11 days? (I feel like there’s something here I should know, but …)
Is it just me, or does the phrase “good government starts today” include an admission that, up til now, we have not had good government?
Mindy, FFS is right for both of those things 😦

I love the parody of the “birther” movement aimed at Tones.
Under the Australian constitution, If you hold foreign citizenship or were never naturalised, you can’t be a federal MP or Senator. That could be gotten around of in the days before electronic records. For example, Chris Watson (born in Chile) and King O’Malley (most likely born in the U.S.).
Jacqui Kelly (from NZ) was tripped up by it in 1996, as was Heather Hill (from the UK) in 1999.

I am terribly disappointed over the Libs failure to dump Tony unceremoniously. Now we are going to be strung along with hints and predictions from a gleeful media for who knows how long.
I’m glad to hear he’s still doomed, but I’d prefer him gone.
The SWAT-ing thing: ultimate form of trolling? People with no empathy or understanding of RL?

Crabb has an excellent turn of phrase.
Rabbi Feldman has resigned his official positions at Sydney Yeshivah, but will continue to teach students. He is also investigating whether he can sue the people who criticised him.
The RC church decided the best thing to do with George Pell was to move him into the Vatican’s budget department.
We so need to establish the difference between ‘holiness’ and ‘righteous’.

– I heard there was one absent and one informal vote, which made me wonder who was the dude who didn’t front up (shirtfront up?) – Barnaby Joyce, lost inside the labyrinth of his own unique mind? And Mr. Informal – couldn’t make up his mind? And how did he make his vote informal – draw a cartoon of TFA in his Speedos (ugh, now I feel sick)?
I don’t know how Turnbull voted, but if you imagine him dropping to his knees and declaiming ‘Who will free me from this turbulent priest?!!!’ you may be amused. Or not. 🙂

Well the White Ribbon people have some ‘splainin to do with another of their ambassadors claiming that women are more likely to commit domestic violence against their partners and that men are being forgotten.

Is this for def the real White Ribbon campaign, or the fake one that contemptible MRA arsewipe has set up?
That SWAT-ing thing, I’ve read about in relation to MRAs and others (troll seems too trivial a word for these shitheads and their behaviour) doing it to women, that and organising for pizzas and magazine subscriptions and stuff as part of their harassment tactics. 😦
Ugh, my language skills have desserted me. 😉

Too many years of Midsomer Murders. I can only think of it as a surname now.
ETA: now I think about it, it was actually Ruddock who repeatedly explained that, because he was briefing the gallery on the count and they kept on asking him over and over about that and just exactly how informal the informal vote was.

Jo (back up thread a ways): The “eleven days” thing is a reference to the spill which gained Tony Abbott his job. He took part in one spill against Malcolm Turnbull, which Turnbull won, then eleven days later called for a second, which was the one he won by one vote. So, we could see another spill by Friday next week if things carry through (and given the gaffe rate is up to at least one per day throughout this new period of “good government”, it’s starting to seem more and more likely).

Too many years of Midsomer Murders. I can only think of it as a surname now.

OMG LOL forever! And now I’m imagining ‘Midsomer Murders’ with Barnaby Joyce instead of Inspector Barnaby!
Hmm, when Fox News (I think it was) claimed Birmingham (UK, not Alabama!) was a no-go zone for police, maybe they’d been watching too many British crime series and took them for documentaries? ‘Cos if Birmingham’s a no-go zone, stay clear of those ‘innocent’ English villages, amirite?

no unfortunately he was a real one. White Ribbon have not really apologised and have said that he is recommitting to White Ribbon whatever that means.

Well. Frack me. Because from what you wrote (I don’t feel up to facing reading the whole thing) he sounded exactly like those MRAs who are all ‘what about the menz’, and there’s been a few high-profile cases of male feminists or allies raping or assaulting women, and it just makes me think some men are donning a feminist/ally sheep’s clothing, if you know what I mean. And hasn’t there been cases in North America where MRAs have taken women’s shelters to court because they didn’t allow men, costing them time, effort, financial trouble?
I mean, men do suffer from domestic abuse, and it is very probably under-reported, but this king of shit doesn’t help them. Methinks, in fact, ’tis the feminists who are trying to break down the stigma and get male victims help.
Ugh. I’m off to find Maru videos.

Though still experiencing extreme disappointment about waking up every day and finding Tony is still PM, he is doing fantastic stuff like sacking Phillip Ruddock. Hearing said Ruddock referred to as an honoured member of the Parliament sets my head spinning – no, he’s a bigger arsehole than Scott Morrison – but it was lovely to see him get the boot so unceremoniously; and to know Tony has dug the hole he is in just that much deeper.
Do you think he told anyone he was going to? Love to have been privy to that conversation.

I read that Ahmed plagiarised an article by Amanda Marcotte: I’m guessing he thinks that if he doesn’t plagiarise the meaning of the article, he’s Ok.
Really sad he didn’t learn from the first time.
Going to discuss the content of his article later. Great ambassador for the White Ribbon campaign. /end sarcasmhttp://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-18/keogh-like-it-or-not-supanova-popular-culture-is-political/6128572
I know I would be making every effort to not see Mr. Baldwin. So, he’s a drawcard in spite of or because of his oft-expressed views?